Awesome

vmware-sercons

VMware Fusion will, if appropriately coerced, emulate UARTs in guests and expose them to the host as UNIX domain sockets. This tool allows you to attach your terminal emulator directly to one of those sockets without having to lark about with socat and screen.

Build the Software

Assuming you have Xcode installed, and thus gcc:

$ git clone git://github.com/jclulow/vmware-sercons.git
$ cd vmware-sercons
$ make
gcc -o sercons sercons.c

VMware Fusion Configuration

While the GUI for VMware Fusion does not presently support adding serial ports as sockets, you can edit the vmx file directly. Add the following snippet (amending for the desired socket path):

serial0.present = "TRUE"
serial0.fileType = "pipe"
serial0.yieldOnMsrRead = "TRUE"
serial0.startConnected = "TRUE"
serial0.fileName = "/tmp/.vmware.com1"

serial1.present = "TRUE"
serial1.fileType = "pipe"
serial1.yieldOnMsrRead = "TRUE"
serial1.startConnected = "TRUE"
serial1.fileName = "/tmp/.vmware.com2"

Running the Software

Before starting up the VM, fire up sercons with the path you nominated for the serial port you want to connect to:

$ sudo ./sercons /tmp/.vmware.com2
 * Waiting for socket...........

The program will continue to retry until a connection is made to the socket.

 * Waiting for socket...........
 * Connected.  Escape sequence is <CR>#.

You should be able to catch pretty much every byte out of the serial port on boot this way, e.g. a grub menu, etc.

Once you're finished, press Enter and then Hash, then Period to end the session.

License

MIT